Cutting the Cable (Almost)

I was at the dinner table in Cape when Mother fired up the TV she got for her 90th birthday back in 2011 to catch The Wheel. The screen was black. So was the mood at the table. You do NOT trifle with The Wheel.

After an inordinate amount of time trying to get through to Charter customer service, I was told that the cable company had switched from analog service to digital service and that she would need converter boxes if she ever wanted to ever see The Wheel again. In the next 48 hours, I got three different versions of how many “free” boxes she could get, how long they would be “free” and how much it would cost per month when they were no longer “free.”

Earlier in the visit, I bought her a refurbished Roku HD Streaming player so she could watch Amazon Prime videos. (Brother Mark and I both have Prime accounts, but he never uses his for movies, so there wouldn’t be any conflict with her logging in under his name.) She liked the way she could start a movie on her iPad on the porch or in the living room, then pick it up on the TV in her bedroom.

Does she NEED cable?

The more I thought about the digital box rental issue, the more I wondered if she really NEEDED cable? Mark and I put our heads together and thought we could get her all the local stations with an off-the-air antenna (OTA), and she could watch other things on the Roku box. Ernie Chiles had an antenna that could be modified to do the job, but I was running short on time and decided to put the project on hold until my summer visit (when it should be really FUN working in the attic.)

Do the Florida Steinhoffs need cable?

That got me to thinking: if Mother could survive without cable, maybe Wife Lila and I could. Son Matt said he dropped his cable several years ago and hadn’t missed it. To prepare for saying goodbye to Comcast, I had to order some stuff.

RCA ANT751 – an antenna capable of picking up a station 37.6 miles away. I decided to do a quick installation in the attic to see if it would work. I preferred not to mount it outside where it would be exposed to salt air and hurricanes. It exceeded expectations. In fact, I got the best result when I pointed the antenna to the south, even though the station furthest from us was to the north. Neighbor Jacqie was impressed enough that he ordered one for the narrow crawlspace of his apartment. He, too, was pleased. $47.99.

RCA Matching Transformer – VH54R – Some of the antenna reviews complained that the 300 ohm to 75 ohm transformer that came with the antenna wasn’t all that great. Jacqie’s worked fine and mine would probably work well, too, being in an attic. But, since I thought I might have to put the antenna on the roof, I opted to get a better transformer to be safe. $5.34.

Roku 2 Streaming Player – 2720R – We already had one Roku, but this would give us one on the living room set where I normally watch, and one for the sewing room set where Wife Lila usually sits. This has promoted domestic tranquility like nothing else I’ve bought recently. The speakers for the living room TV are on the wall between the living room and the bedroom. Since I usually watch a little TV before turning in after finishing the blog around 2 a.m., I have to ride the volume control knob to keep the sound high enough that I can hear it, but low enough that it doesn’t blow her out of bed. This Roku’s remote has a headphone jack on it. It’s amazing how much more you can hear through headphones than through the wall speakers. $59.99

Mediasonic HW-150PVR HomeWorx ATSC Digital TV Converter Box with Media Player and Recording PVR Function – only one of our TVs was new enough not to need a converter box. The good news is that this box is only $37.25 and it has the ability to record to an external hard drive. Since we’ve had TiVos for years, that was a nice feature. The bad news is that the remote was less than friendly and the interface for setting up recordings was even less intuitive. It WORKED, but I knew somebody in the house who wouldn’t like giving up the convenience of the TiVo.

What else did we need?

Sons Matt and Adam bought me a monster TV for my birthday in 2004. It has served us well, but you can tell from the photos that it’s about the size and weight of a VW Bug. That’s Adam and his buddy, Jay, wrestling it into place when it was new. Taking out the cable box, hooking up the Roku and removing the TiVo wasn’t too much trouble. I managed to get the digital converter to record The Big Bang Theory, even if I hated the remote. I started binge-watching Dexter on Netflix and all was fine. I left Wife Lila on the cable until I figured out if this was going to work.

We wanted a way to get some of the stuff that didn’t appear over the air.

Amazon Prime – we are already Prime subscribers, primarily for two-day shipping, free movies, free music and the like. We’re still on the $79 a year plan plan. New subscribers will pay $99.

Netflix – this is a video streaming service you can access through the Roku box. It’s good for movies and binge-watching multiple episodes of TV shows. Adam advocates this. Requires an Internet connection and costs $8 to $12 a month depending on how many simultaneous connections you want. The first month is free to try it out.

Hulu-Plus – Matt likes it. Unlike Netflix, their business model is built on showing you two or three episodes of current TV shows a day after they usually air. I hated it. The big deal-killer was that it has commercials embedded in it that can’t be skipped. If you have been using TiVo for years and got in the habit of never seeing a car salesman or a political attack ad, you have a low tolerance for ads. It also didn’t have some of the few regular network programs we had hoped to watch. I killed it at the end of the free week. About $8 a month.

How did it work out?

Two days before the end of our Comcast cable billing cycle, I called to cancel our service. A very nice woman tried to tell me all the wonderful things we were going to miss, and I countered every argument. “Look,” I said, “it boils down to simple economics: we pay you about $84 a month for service; we pay TiVo about $21 bucks a month. We can pocket almost all of that money after a one-time outlay for equipment and a miniscule monthly charge for streaming services.”

“How about if I can get you down to $19.95 a month, plus $3.99 each for your two converter boxes. Would that make you stick around for 12 months?”

Wife Lila was giving me the thumbs-up in the background. It was worth that to keep her TiVo.

Re-inventing the wheel

We opted to keep her office computer on the antenna in case the cable goes out, but I needed to reinstall all my equipment. To make a long, painful story short, I ran into snags. One of them was trying to get in behind the monster TV to plug stuff in and trace wires.

I told Wife Lila, “When I get the $50 million check from that Nigerian prince, the first thing I’m going to do is get a modern TV that weighs 13 pounds, not 13 tons.”

“The check should be here any day, and a new TV is less than $300, so go for it,” she said. (She was probably counting on my life insurance to kick in if the prince didn’t.)

I sent Matt an email telling him that he could have a really good TV set if (A) he carried it off and (B) helped me hook up all the pieces/parts.

He and Sarah of mileage log fame came by Saturday. We were holding Grandson Malcolm, who spent the night with us, as a hostage. Matt convinced me that we should disconnect everything, get it all plugged in, then see if it worked. In a mere four or five hours (without a single trip to Radio Shack or Best Buy), he had it hooked up, configured properly and doing all it was supposed to do. That cost both of us new TVs.

So what about Mother?

I learned that you can get good quality pictures with an antenna. Her stations are a little further away than our stations, but I’m still going to try mounting the antenna in her attic first. If that doesn’t do the job, then I’ll go on the roof or get a stronger antenna. She never has recorded shows, so that won’t be a factor. Since I don’t need the digital converters I bought for our sets, I’ll pass them on to her.

Disclosure: All of the links I provided are for Amazon. That’s where I bought my stuff. If you click on the link to make your purchase, I get about 6% of whatever you spend without it costing you a penny. All my research, trials and tribulations should be worth that much to you.

Last minute thought: there are some excellent resources out there to help you pick the right antenna based on where you live. I found a guy in the TV department at Cape’s Best Buy to be knowledgeable. Here are some websites, too:

11 Replies to “Cutting the Cable (Almost)”

Excellent research on this article sir. As a forward thinking, modern individual I was thinking along the same lines. Of course being cheap leads me in the same lines too. I only watch the local cable news, Bay News 9 and history channel and pay about $120.00 for cable TV so this is good place to start! Should anyone tell Brune that you can see Gunsmoke and The Twilight Zone on cable channel TVland, maybe…maybe not. Nicely done Doctor S…

but again you just show the world that your world famous investigative skills have become a victim of early onset ‘old timers disease’ brought on by your “riding without a helmet, booze drenched, cigar fogged Fancy Florida night life – all because you’re trying to hang on to and please a much younger and beautiful wife! …. then you back slap me, one of your only real friends, with an insult about not knowing I can watch Batman & Wagon Train on TVLand.

Of course I know that P.U. I was trying to make a point about how Dr. Gizmo is trying to reinvent the wheel to save a couple bucks. Hell, most of us up here in the heartland just got those old rusted antennas OFF OUR ROOFS in the last few years when we were replacing the 25 year old shingles on our 1950 era homes.

PLUS…. the “cable companies” in their infinite wisdom have made a provision for folks with “limited interest” like you… and cheap SOBs like Dr. Gizmo – who’s mothers just want to watch the local broadcast stations.

IT’S CALL “BASIC CABLE”!!! and it costs about 19.95 per month.

Instead…. The good doctor has 5-6 people working unimaginably miserable long HOURS in hot musty old attics, then buying out Radio Shack’s 1960 inventory of old antiquated TV/FM antennas, and then having to order expensive modern electronic converters and booster devices from AMAZON.COM to make them work.

Then he writes one of his long, technical, overly photo documented stories…. just to have something to blog about….. and don’t forget: to lastly encourage US …… “the great unwashed” his loyal readers, supporters, and his oldest friends…… to “Do as the Doctor Does”, and not forget that the ‘opulent’ Steinhoff Foundation gets a 6% KICKBACK from his co-conspirator…. the even more opulent AMAZON.COM!!!

Whew!!! See what you made me do Terry???

I was satisfied with the original 2 little lines of simple sarcasm and good natured teasing …. but NO-O-O-O-O-O ! …. you had to weigh in …. and make me “SPLAIN in PAINFUL DETAIL” exactly what I was sarcasm’ing … about.

When I got back home and peruse old Reader’s Digests from the 50s and 60s, I’m amused by the number of stories talking about “pay TV.” Of course, nobody would PAY for television. But, call it “cable TV,” and people will fork over what once would have been a mortgage payment every month.

We cable cutters are in the ascendancy. You’re going to be sorry you took down that old TV mast.

Hey Ken… they’re really advertising something up here call CLEAR TV. Its a HD Digital Antenna. a small square (looks aprox 10″/10″ & about 1″ thick) that hooks the the back of the TV and you stand it up or hang it the way we used to do rabbit ears.

Sounds like it does everything your fancy new antenna, that looks like a scale model of the SPACE STATION, does, but perhaps not the range. TheY’re selling them two for $19.99.

I just noticed that at the same time I was telling you about the CLEAR-TV HD Digital Antenna’s (2 for $19.99) doing the same thing as your high priced scale model of the INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION – ClearTV had an advertisement ON YOUR BLOG !!!! Right between the world renown Murder Mystery Novelist – Billy Hopkins, and Annie Laurie’s Treasure or Trash Surprise Boutique. ClearTV apparently alternates with At&t Universe in those Google ads that funnel big dollars into the Opulent Steinhoff Foundation.

As we all know Ken – there are no accidents! Now the UNIVERSE is trying to tell you something good Doctor Gizmo!!

Wow, how things have changed in my brief 58 years! Growing up 30 miles west of Cape, we could watch channels 12, 6, and sometimes 3 if the planets, weather, and Channel Master antennae were aligned.

My mom (88, in Cape) has one of the satellite services with four boxes and a dish in the yard, beautifully set among my dad’s rose bushes. Other than local broadcasts, C-Span, and religious programming, the rest are mostly shopping channels. She watches channel 12 news and Antiques Roadshow on PBS, maybe a little baseball, or the Olympics.

I have cable here in St Louis where that outfit just made us go get black boxes the size of a sheet cake to connect to any TV we wanted to continue to watch. I made a “deal” with them to supply two “free” boxes for our six TVs. Four TVs are now cold and dark.

They added some channels that we’ll never watch and the converter boxes will heat up a Banquet TV dinner before you even turn on the set. They come with a remote as big as my foot that has forty-seven buttons with labels in a font size used for legal disclaimers on the back page of owner’s manuals. I use Power, Channel, and Volume, along with my reading glasses.

We subscribe to Netflix. Both houses have WiFi internet service.

At a current monthly $300 or so between the two households, it won’t take long to pay for the hardware you recommend to get more programming than we could (or would care to) watch. I’m happy to cut you in on 6% of anything I might buy from your links. Thanks for doing the research and presenting in such an entertaining fashion.

I wonder if there is a source to find out if our most-watched cable channels are available via streaming — Discovery, History, Comedy Channel, LOGO, and a handful of others.

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Purchases made at Amazon put 6% of the total transaction price in Ken's pocket at no additional cost to you. You're going to shop online anyway, right? Do it through Amazonto support this web site. Pretty please.

Cape Central High Photos

Ken Steinhoff, Cape Girardeau Central High School Class of 1965, was a photographer for The Tiger and The Girardot, and was on the staff of The Capaha Arrow and The Sagamore at Southeast Missouri State University. He worked as a photographer / reporter (among other things) at The Jackson Pioneer and The Southeast Missourian.

He transferred to Ohio University in Athens, Ohio, his junior year, and served as photo editor of The Ohio University Post. He was also chief photographer of The Athens Messenger.

He was chief photographer of the Gastonia (NC) Gazette for a long 18 months until he could escape to The Palm Beach Post, where he served as a staff photographer, director of photography, editorial operations manager and telecommunications manager. He accepted a buyout in 2008, after 35 years at the paper.

Most of the stories are about growing up in a small Midwestern town on the Mississippi River, but there’s no telling what you might run into.

Please comment on the articles when you see I have left out a bit of history, forgotten a name or when your memory of a circumstance conflicts with mine.

(My mother said her stories improved after all the folks who could contradict died off.)

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